Christmas card glitter nearly blinds woman after causing lesion

Glitter from a Christmas card nearly blinded a woman after it worked its way into her eyeball, according to a report in the the British Medical Journal. The 49-year-old suffered a reddened eye, loss of vision and swollen eyelid.

Doctors at the ophthalmology department of Singleton Hospital in Swansea spotted a lesion on the patient's cornea. After it was examined under a microscope, a shiny surface was spotted inside. The patient then remembered getting glitter in her eye when it rubbed off a Christmas card.

The glitter had formed into a clump causing a lesion that mimicked the symptoms of a herpes infection.

"The lesion may have been easily misdiagnosed as a herpetic simplex infection by non-specialists for which treatment would have been topical antiviral ointment instead of removal and antibiotics," the report said.